The widespread use of the Internet as a distribution channel for multimedia data and the advancement in storage technology enable users to have a very large collection of multimedia files. It is not uncommon for a user to have hundreds or even thousands of files stored in the hard drive of a personal computer (PC). The growing of the already very large collection of multimedia files increases the difficulty of accessing the desirable file.
The storage capacity of portable media players is usually much smaller than the storage capacity of a PC. Therefore it is impossible for a user to transfer their whole collection of multimedia files from the PC to a portable unit. The user must select a small portion from the large collection. This becomes increasingly difficulty as the collection grows.
The time required to transfer multimedia files from a PC to a portable unit can take minutes to hours depending on the capacity of the portable unit. As there is a trend in increasing capacity of the portable unit, the time required to fill-up the portable unit with multimedia content will increase. Therefore, it will be a waste of time and create inconvenience to the user if the transferred multimedia content is not the desirable one.
Currently, media player software only allows users to assemble ‘playlists’ based on a targeted range of capacity. This requires the user to be aware of the remaining capacity of the portable device. Some software allows a selection based on the popularity, source or last access time. However, their implementation is a manual process and requires the attention from users. For example, the user has to recall from his memory whether the most frequently or recently accessed media files are desirable. In short, the current approach requires the attention and active participation of the users to select the desirable content.